28,000 consumer grievances registered in five months against e-commerce websites

If you had a less-than-memorable experience on an e-commerce portal, know that you’re not the only oneNeha Madaan | TNN | May 19, 2017, 12:50 IST

If you had a less-than-memorable experience on an e-commerce portal, know that you’re not the only one.

Between November 2016 and March this year, the National Consumer Helpline has registered a whopping 28,000 consumer complaints from across the country against e-commerce portals. This is the highest number of complaints against any sector.

Sources managing the helpline said since online shopping portals have no regulator, customer issues concerning security and authentication problems are on the rise.

With this deluge of complaints, this sector has dethroned the telecom sector with the most consumer grievances.

Data also showed that the most complaints were received from Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan each month.

“Over the last year, more and more people have started shopping online and so, there is an increase in complaints against e-commerce companies. This category currently has the highest share of complaints at the helpline,” said Suresh Mishra, project director, National Consumer Helpline.

Non-delivery and late delivery of products are the biggest contributors to complaints, followed by delivery of defective products. Delivery of the wrong product, failure to refund the amount, and false promises are the other categories.

“Misrepresentative ads, unfair marketing practices are at times used to attract customers,” said Mishra, adding, “The number of complaints received at the helpline also shows that selling inferior and spurious products is also rampant. There is no regulator monitoring this sector, therefore policies and guidelines to protect consumers are the need of the hour,” he added.

In some cases, Mishra added, money is deducted but the product is not delivered. No information about the company’s office or missing contact details further compound the issue.

Shweta Chawla, chief investigator at SC Cyber Solutions, said that consumers from Pune have increasingly been falling prey to ‘fly-by-night’ online shopping portals. “It is very easy to build an online shopping site, and integrate a store and payment gateway into it. We are seeing many cases of questionable shopping portals, mainly because there is no verification done when a hosting space or domain name is bought,” she said.

Chawla said that she had also come across cases where less secure websites were hacked into, and a store and payment gateway were built into them. “Consumers were then lured to buy products and pay for them through various methods. The product in such cases never really reaches the buyer’s doorstep,” said Chawla.

In such cases, cybercrime experts suggest consumers be wary of which portal they are visiting. Check that the URL starts with ‘https://’, rather than just ‘http://’, looking for the lock symbol on the lower right-hand corner of the web browser and double-clicking it to check the validity of the digital certificate, and checking on search engines for scams/frauds, for instance “XYZ company scam”, were a few tips to protect against such less-secure websites.